Quantum Mutata
by bbdarknyss
Summary: Peter and Pop muse


**Quantum Mutata**

**How Much Changed**

It is Utopia.  
Tao is, I mean.  
Oh, don't get me wrong. The Shaolin way is wonderful. In Tao, one can find peace and I admire those who can walk that path. But to me, it's Utopia as was the Temple.  
The Temple was a bull's eye, a sitting duck, a pouring forth of hate waiting to happen. The monks, my father, they had grown too complacent; too secure in the false idea that Utopia would not be intruded upon.  
Paradise invited death, destruction and sorrow. And Utopia was torn apart.

I'm a cop. It's a part of me but it isn't who I am. I pride myself in being more than the sum of my meagre parts. Cop, son of a Shaolin priest, Foster son of a cop/agent, novice.  
All these little labels are a part of who I am, I can't deny them. But, there is still more to me than that. More things that –I'm sure- can be labelled quite quickly by a team of professional headshrinkers; and possibly quite an impressive part that my father and The Ancient could easily identify as of the Demon variety. The destruction of Utopia can create quite nasty ones.

The world I live in is purgatory, hell perhaps.  
It is witnessing the vilest behaviour of mankind. It's living with countless memories of bodies and blood and guns. It's being a shield for others, a target, an aggravation, a victim.  
We are the cataloguers of sin, the recorders of human cruelty, the students of pain and sorrow.  
We are the thin blue line that stands between civilisation and chaos. Shouldn't forget criminals are civilians too. Civilians turn criminal at the whiff of a Rolex. We are the thin blue line slowly going numb.  
A person can witness only a certain amount of violence before he breaks. We break, patch up, move on, break, patch up, move on, break, eat our gun.  
Being a cop has ingrained me with a devotion for the fight for justice –that is never just- for peace –that can never exist.  
I was born in fire, baptised with gun oil, fed on pain, washed with blood. I'm Hell's guardian, Heaven's warden. Forever torn between Utopia and purgatory, I live on the edge, I live in reality.

This my father does not understand.

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It brings me sorrow to see how my son has lost his way.  
He has wandered so far from the path that was destined for him and he has rejected the peace of Tao.  
It is hard to find acceptance in the fact that being a police officer is his new destiny. It would have surprised me if my son had not strayed from the path in all those years, but I never would have thought he would choose a life so diametrically opposed to our teachings.

It is not an easy thought to know he has killed people. Most likely, they were not innocents and my son must have felt he had been presented with no other choice than to take a life. He rails against the notion that there is always another choice.  
He is correct in his beliefs that the Tao in not reconcilable with his present life, but I know it would bring him the peace he so needs. He balks at that thought, not wanting to give up his job for anything. I don't know if he fears another way of life or if he simply does not wish to remember how his life used to be.

I am proud of my son. Proud that he survived alone in a world that must not have been kind to him. At least, not until the Blaisdell family took him in. I am proud that he became a protector, a defender of innocents; he had that urge all along.  
And yet, I am saddened to see how violent this life is, how much it is a part of him, how much it destroys him.  
I miss my child. The bright-eyed boy I lost 15 years ago. I do not find him in this angry young man that is my son. I do not see him in his eyes, hear him in his voice. This man is a complete stranger to me, but still...  
I should not look for the child anymore, but accept the man he has become.  
My Peter. It is a constant amazement to be able to tie that name again to a living, breathing person.  
Even if it is sometimes hard, it is a joy.  
I wonder if my son feels the same way.

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I longed for my father every single day for the last 15 years, the wish never left me. I felt incomplete, damaged without him.  
As the saying goes "Be careful what you wish for". My father is returned to me and I find it very hard to have him back in my life. We're both so different now. Of course, we weren't going to be the same people who lived in the Temple, too much happened in our years apart. I'm violent, he's peaceful, I'm an emotional mess, and he's centered and calm. Frustrating isn't the word for it.  
When I'm with him, I feel again like a twelve-year old and although I cherish the memories of my old life, I don't want to feel like twelve again. I don't want my father to keep looking for that boy in me. Oh, he's in there somewhere but I want my father to accept who I am now, who I've become.  
I love my father. I think he's trying to love me too, I think he's struggling with the fact that loving me doesn't diminish the love he has for Temple Peter.

It's scary as hell to have my father back. He makes me too vulnerable. I feel like I'm on display or that I'm carrying around a billboard that says "Hey Pop, look at me! This is how I turned out, what do you think?".  
But he only gives me a shrug and a slap and he thinks that answer is sufficient. Maybe he feels that I won't be satisfied by any answer he can give me. Maybe he just doesn't have anything to say to me. The thought makes me nauseous.  
So, I push and I prod and I question and chip away at his defences until I end up pushing him away for six months. Six fucking months.  
No, I didn't understand why he needed to leave but I played my part of the dutiful son who knows what it means for a Shaolin to lose his path. Fuck his path. I'm his son; we've been separated for fifteen years, why can't I be his path?  
I scared him away with my pushing, he must be so disappointed in me. It's my own fault, I didn't have to be so fucking curious but I need to know what he's been doing all this time. I just want to know him better. He's as much a stranger to me as I must be to him. I want us to know each other as before, but he wants to keep his damn mysteries.

Conversation with him feels like a difficult strategic battle. Talking to your father shouldn't make you feel like getting out the old Kevlar. I attack, he waylays. I counter, he evades. I reassemble the troops, he pulls back. I persue and he vanishes behind smoke and candles.  
I could so easily hate him for that.

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My Peter  
I know he does not understand why I had to leave him. I explained to him that my path had become obscured but I know he does not and will not understand. He does not believe in paths or destinies, he lives in the now.  
He demands answers I cannot provide and the vagueness I can offer him angers him. Difficult boy! I should not have to explain our ways to him.

He was brave, my son, when he let me go. He did not try to stop me or to encumber me with more guilt. He flinched from my touch, which pained me.  
There is a sadness within him that cannot be lifted. It is mixed with so much anger and I fear his bitterness will end up doing away with all other feelings, it eats away at his soul like a fungus tasting of gall and tears. The depth of his turbulent emotions frightens me.  
I know fear again. For fifteen years, I wandered fearlessly because I had nothing left to lose, but now it disrupts my concentration, unbalances my meditation. It is with me all the time, the familiar worry that harks back to the day Peter was born. I cherished and trusted that worry for twelve years until it was no longer needed. It has settled around my heart again. In a way, it does not displease me as it means my son is returned to me. I have years of worrying to catch up on and Peter gives me ample cause. Someone might hate him just enough some day and he would be lost.  
I could not bear it. When he died to me, I lost my focus, my reason for being. If Peter would die now, he would find his father ready to accompany him on that path. I could never face that pain again yet I fear it to be in my future.  
I fear for you, my son.

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Pop is ...difficult. No, that's not fair; in fact he's the easiest of men, the most honest, straightforward, humble man in the world.  
There I go, lying again.  
My father is a mystery, an anachronism, a spouter of wisdom, a keeper of cryptic sayings, a man who hides behind traditions, incense and candles.  
My father is a hard man, a harsh man, selfish and proud, a hypocrite, a two-faced liar, a violent man.  
My father is a caring man, gentle, calm, precise, peaceful, kind and loving.  
How can one man be all that? How in God's name could that man ever care about me?  
Before entering my father's loft, I always get the urge to whip out my copy of the 'Art of War'. Talking to him, interacting with him can be so frustrating. Half the time, he's trying to evade me but otherwise he tries to teach me things I no longer wish to know. I bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from exploding at him and so putting an end to having him back altogether. I don't want a teacher, I want a father.  
Maybe it's theatre. I sure feel like I'm playing a part, this caricature of who I am just to keep him in my life. I'm a halfway decent actor but keeping in part isn't easy around him. I lose my lines from time to time or I get the scenes mixed up and a bit of real Peter shines through and, yup, we've got fireworks.  
Pop already finds it hard to accept caricature Peter and he's a nice guy, he'd hate the real me. If he caught more than a glimpse of the real me, I'd find the kwoon empty within hours. Lo Si would be there, assuring me that my father was on another search for his path but I would know, Lo Si would know and Dad would know and I'd never see him again.  
So, I act my part and I try to mix in a little bit of real Peter every day but I've been playing this for such a long time and I'm beginning to forget who is the real Peter and who is the caricature and I don't want to forget because I don't like the caricature, he's not me. Sometimes I just get so tired of pretending but I can't stop because somewhere I forgot a line and I missed a scene and I don't know who I really am anymore.  
I'm laughing because it's so damn funny. All the world's a stage and here I am and it's the big opening, the theatre's packed with people and they all look like my father and they know the play, they read the program and they know what should happen and here I am. I'm the big star and I can't fuck it up because my life depends on it and I lost my line and there's no one to whisper it to me.

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My son is still young, only twenty-eight, but when I look at him he seems much older. There are fine lines around his eyes, which speak of pain and sorrow. There is a set to his mouth only bitterness could have put there. In his eyes lurks weariness too profound for his age, hopelessness. His gaze is hesitant, wary, always looking for the handle, the lie, the rejection, always alert for danger.  
He looks like a man tormented by demons, like a war veteran and perhaps he is both. The horrors he has seen haunt him at night as they always did.

When Peter died to me all those years ago, he dies an inquisitive, sensitive and happy child yet he is returned to me in the form of a young man in whom violence and grief have torn holes. A man who has been broken and ill-repaired, a man who does not trust and who will not accept unconditional love, one who cannot believe in the most simple act of caring.  
Yet, despite all this, he cares for others; he will protect the innocent and is fiercely loyal to the few people he has befriended. His distrust of others, even those he calls friends and family, is a flaw within him exacerbated by the things that have happened to him when he was still so young.  
It is not easy to love someone who will do anything in his power to push you away.

I fear he will forever keep testing me, he will keep pushing as if trying to prove that my love could indeed be conditional. He believes that it is only in staying that I can prove my love for him; too many people have left him.  
It's tiresome but I will gladly be put to the test. If Peter needs the proof of my love, I will provide it. It is the simplest of tasks.


End file.
